New order, new result, same old stuff

March 10 2003

Another Australian Grand Prix has been run and won, but even with the changes to the rules, Greg Baum is left wondering what it was all for.

Michael Schumacher didn't win. Neither Ferrari driver was even on the podium. Albert Park was awash with red, as usual, but at race's end, scarcely a red flag was waved, nor a red-blooded voice raised. It was like the Essendon end of the MCG after the 1999 preliminary final. In a sport that is about nothing if not noise, their silence spoke volumes.

On the first day of the new rules, there was a new order. No one was expecting it to become a reign, least of all surprise winner David Coulthard. The three on the podium were linked by the fact they all used Michelin tyres and Ferrari uses Bridgestone, but no one was reading anything even into that.

There had been so many variables and imponderables this day that no one was prepared to say that the anti-red revolution was at hand. One was the fact that all were still adapting to the new and rigorous rules. Another was sheer, blind luck, or the lack of it, for which no rule can be written. A third, and probably the most crucial, was Melbourne's fickle and feckless weather.

If one of the purposes of the grand prix is to sell Melbourne to the wider world via television, viewers around the globe yesterday would have seen a grey, wet, dank city. It was not especially cold, but it would have looked it on television, an imperfect medium. The economic benefits should run into the tens of dollars.

Paul Stoddart, owner of the Minardi team, gambled his all on a wet-weather strategy that meant deliberately starting from last. As a Melbourne boy, he should have known that it rains a lot here, but never when it is wanted. The rain stopped, the breeze sprung up, the track dried and his drivers finished 11th and nowhere.");document.write("

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Runner-up Juan Pablo Montoya, driving a Williams-BMW, was twice thwarted by the emergence of the safety car - which puts the race into holding pattern while debris is cleared from the track - once when leading and another time when closing fast on the lead. If one of the purposes of grand prix racing is to expose makes of cars in order to sell them, somebody should open up a safety car dealership today. It would do a roaring trade.

Montoya was philosophical. "Basically, shit happens," he said. A boy from Bogota knows that much worse shit than this happens every day.

Anticipating and managing the vagaries of the weather become the key. The choice of tyres was as crucial as the choice between short and long stops for a footballer.

Coulthard, it could be argued, won the race because he realised as early as the warm-up lap that wet-weather slicks would be a liability on a fast-drying track and stopped sooner than any other in the field to change. But much more would pass under the Bridgestone before the day was done.

The lead changed a dozen times, between Schumacher, Montoya, Kimi Raikkonen and Coulthard, but never because of one car passing another on the track. This is either formula one's great intrigue or its great blight, depending on your point of view.

The race began as so many before it, with the Ferraris of Schumacher and Rubens Barrichello clearing out by 10 seconds after just two laps. But the wheels came off for Barrichello in spectacular manner and Schumacher was forced to make three pit stops, the last because a panel came loose when he drove over a ripple strip and had to be wrenched off. Not even Schumacher can win while sitting in pit lane.

Raikkonen raced with characteristic cool, but when threatening the lead was penalised for speeding in pit lane. In a sport in which the only true speeding offence is a lack of it, this was a shitty happening.

Montoya, twice foiled by the safety car, regained the lead, but spun out with 10 laps remaining, yielding the lead to Coulthard.

Raikkonen and Schumacher provided the only instance of motor-racing daredevilry on the day. They were duelling fender to fender for second place when Schumacher made an audacious attempt to pass Raikkonen on the first turn, only for the Finn to hold him out with a feat of nerveless driving typical of Schumacher himself. "The corner wasn't wide enough for two cars," po-faced Raikkonen said.

In the last half dozen laps, barely a second covered Schumacher, Raikkonen and Montoya in the race for minor positions. Notionally, this was exciting. But no driver even attempted to overtake. Other than to the committed, this is where formula one pales in comparison with its two-wheeled counterpart, MotoGP.

So this phenomenon, half-sport, half-marketing campaign, has passed through Melbourne again. I learnt two things yesterday: the first, taught by a corporate passholder, was that the half-clad women who abound are called "beer bitches"; the other, taught by the course commentator, was that it will cost $9000 to replace the door a Porsche had damaged in an earlier, rain-sodden race. Today, Albert Park begins to return to normal.